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That Chocolate Cupcake

I know, it's been a really long time. In my defense, I work for Yahoo! and things have been weird so I've been doing a lot more work type stuff. But, this Memorial Day weekend, I've been visiting a lot of family and friends and have been making some goodies.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Whisk the eggs into the milk and oil with a fork. Pour the egg mixture into the dry ingredients and stir with a rubber spatula until just combined. The original recipe calls for 1 cup of boiling water, but I think this makes the batter too runny for cupcakes. The next time I make this recipe, I think I might leave the water out all together, and maybe replace 1/2 the oil with butter to make the cake a little denser.

Pour the boiling water into the batter and mix gently. Put cupcake liners in a cupcake pan and fill them 2/3 full. I think I overfilled mine and some of the batter oozed out over the sides. Bake for 22-24 minutes, rotating once at the halfway point.

To make the frosting, boil the cream, sugar and vanilla together (if you're using extract, don't add the vanilla until the very end). After it's been boiling for a few minutes and there are no granules left, pour the mixture over the chocolate and stir until everything is melted. Then cut the butter into 8 pieces and stir it in until melted. Let the frosting sit, stirring periodically until it's stiff enough to spread - basically until it looks like frosting. :)

Once the cupcakes have cooled, spread the frosting on them. Wash and dry your strawberries (I used a paper towel to dry) and then slice them vertically leaving the part by the hull connected so that you can fan them out. Place a fanned strawberry on each cupcake.

So I wanted to try that new ombre cake frosting trend. I used whip cream here on an eggless chocolate cake I made for a potluck at work (for those egg-free individuals on my team). Everyone was sufficiently impressed. I was a little disappointed at the messiness of the blue/purple end, and I kinda ran out of cream, but it tasted good. Anyway...

I was looking all over for pasta bakes that use uncooked pasta. After some modifications due to missing ingredients (my ricotta went bad) this was the random recipe that got my husband to eat like 2.5 helpings and my 4-year-old son to eat a bowl after telling me he didn't want any. Not sure if that's a good thing, but it at least indicated that it tasted good. :)

Ingredients
8 oz uncooked pasta (I used gemelli because I like the shape)
15 oz Sonoma Gourmet Roasted Vegetable pasta sauce (you can use any pasta sauce you like - this is just what we had)
1 c milk
1/4 c water
1/3 c grated parmesan
1 lb sausage (optional)
3/4 c riced cauliflower (optional)
More grated parmesan and cheddar for the top
Fresh ground black pepper

I only threw in the sausage for flavor and the cauliflower so we could pretend we're eating vegetables.

Preheat oven to 375F. If you're using sausage and cauliflower, cook the sausage in a pan first and throw in the cauliflower at the end.